The Earth Doc programme
An international group of inter-disciplinary postdoc researchers advancing the next generation of integrated Earth System science towards global sustainability: through World-Earth systems modeling.
You will find information on the individual Earth Docs here:
Ilona Otto
(c) private
Dr. Ilona M. Otto holds an Earth-Doc position within the Earth League network, and is based at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) in Germany. She graduated PhD in resource economics at the Humboldt University in Berlin. Ilona’s research interests include modeling of social-ecological systems, social vulnerability to climate change, and environmental governance. In her work she combines various data bases and research methods in analyzing problems related to global environment changes, development, adaptation and sustainability.
Ilona made two documentary movies about her work that were used in stakeholder engagement processes in Europe and China. She publishes in leading scientific journals and she co-authored the “Turn Down the Heat” report series commissioned by the World Bank Group. Ilona regularly teaches Climate and Energy Management and Advanced Empirical Methods for Social-Ecological System Research at the Humboldt University in Berlin.
Ilona's tasks within the EarthDoc network include conceptualisation of human agency and social stratification that could be integrated in the World-Earth modeling. In her work she would like identify sustainability transformation pathways that can also lead to a more fair and just society.
View Ilona's personal webpage here.
Avit Bhowmik
(c) private
Dr. Avit K. Bhowmik holds a Postdoctoral Researcher position at Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, Sweden, where he is affiliated with the Planetary Boundaries research group. He also holds a Guest Lecturer position at the University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany, from where he received his PhD degree in Environmental Science.
Avit has a strong background in Geospatial Technologies with a particular focus on Geographic Information Science and Systems (GIS) and Spatiotemporal Statistics. His primary research concerns large scale spatiotemporal dynamics in earth systems and environmental processes; identification of their key drivers; and human and environmental impacts. Avit's research also involves novel approaches for filling environmental data-gaps in data-scarce regions in order to reduce uncertainty in spatiotemporal variability modelling. He has hands-on expertise in big data and data-server management, pattern recognition, geospatial software and tool development, and co-interfacing software packages through command line environment to enhance computational ability.
Within the framework of Earth-Doc endeavours, Avit focuses on understanding spatiotemporal disparities, interactions and networks in high resolution dynamics of earth system processes and their great acceleration. He intends to identify the key drivers of earth dynamics in the new epoch of Anthropocene with particular focus on their socio-economic drivers. His research will potentially contribute to a robust parameterization and empirical validation of the World-Earth model. Moreover, this will outline the path to downscale planetary boundaries to regional, national and social levels, which are relevant for policy and decision making and implementation.
View Avit's personal website here.
Roger Cremades
(c) private
Dr. Roger Cremades (Rodeja) studied Forestry Engineering (BSc), Environmental Science (BSc), Environmental Economics (MSc) and obtained his PhD in Geosciences. He worked in participatory planning of urban sustainability as a consultant, before starting his scientific career. His research is trans-disciplinary, cutting across economics, policy making, natural resources, climate change and service to stakeholders.
Roger has experience with a variety of economic models, including dynamical systems, global integrated assessment models, econometrics, partial equilibrium models, and other tools such as cost-efficiency analyses or multi-criteria assessments. Overall he has more than 14 years of experience working on global change related jobs on public administrations, private business and international research institutions. He also participates in different research projects in the frontier of human interactions with global environmental change, and has substantial international experience, particularly in China and India.
Within the Earth-Doc network, Roger is based at the Climate Service Center Germany (GERICS) and will work on counterfactuals and frontiers in the economics of socio-ecological dynamics. He will focus on urban spaces as hubs of socio-ecological dynamics in the earth system and on the economics of urban transformation, with a vocation for service.
View Roger's personal webpage here.
Jonathan Donges
(c) private
Dr. Jonathan Donges holds a joint PostDoc position at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), Germany, and the Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University, Sweden, embedded in the Earth League’s EarthDoc program and the Planetary Boundary Research Network. He is co-leader of PIK’s flagship project COPAN on the coevolutionary dynamics of social-ecological systems on a planetary scale.
Jonathan holds a PhD in Theoretical Physics from Humboldt University Berlin and has published on a variety of topics including complex networks, complex systems theory, nonlinear dynamics, time series analysis, climatology, paleoclimate and social-ecological systems. He has co-organized two focus workshops in the ongoing LOOPS series on “Closing the loop – Towards co-evolutionary modeling of global society-environment interactions” (Kloster Chorin, 2014) and “From limits to growth to planetary boundaries: defining the safe and just space for humanity” (Southampton, 2015) and serves as co-editor for a Special Issue on these topics in the journal Earth System Dynamics. He has received several awards for his dissertation work including the Wladimir Peter Köppen Prize in Climate Research by the Cluster of Excellence CliSAP, Hamburg, and the Donald L. Turcotte award for outstanding dissertations in Nonlinear Geophysics by the American Geophysical Union.
Within the EarthDoc network, Jonathan focusses on developing conceptual foundations and design principles to build a prototype World-Earth model drawing on complex systems theory and adaptive social-ecological network dynamics to link established modeling approaches from the social and natural Earth system sciences. He will apply World-Earth modeling to analyse the safe and just space for humanity and the resilience of transformative future pathways.
View Jonathan's personal website here.
Ignacio Venancio
(c) private
Dr. Igor Martins Venancio P. de Oliveira holds a PostDoc position at the National Institute for Spatial Research (INPE), Brazil. He studied Biology (BSc), Geochemistry (MSc) and obtained his PhD in Geosciences.
Igor has a background in paleoclimate and paleoceanography. His main research topics are Quaternary paleoceanography and paleoclimatology, millennial climate variability and development of paleoceanographic proxies. He participated in research projects that aimed to investigate the influence of changes in ocean circulation on the climate of South America.
Within the EarthDoc network, Igor's work will focus on the investigation of past climate changes using continental and marine archives, determination of the climate sensitivity of regional systems to abrupt climate change and establishment of a comparison between paleoclimate data and coupled ocean-atmosphere model simulations. This will provide the means to assess the ability of models to simulate past and future climate changes.
About the programme
Next level integrated Earth Systems
In today's fully globalized and increasingly turbulent world of the Anthropocene, we now face an urgent need to advance integrated Whole-Earth system analyses that can inform potential outcomes. This will also allow us to explore future pathways towards transformation on a safe and resilient planet for Earth and mankind.
Of particular importance is the integration of the human dimensions - from human behavior and equity, to global economics, development needs, security and governance – along with biophysical dynamics of the Earth system – from global change processes to interactions, feedbacks and threshold behavior. Such integrated World-Earth [or social-ecological Earth system] modeling has been called for by the scientific community for more than a decade (e.g., Schellnhuber 1999; Amsterdam declaration 2000), and even though major advancements have been made in both Earth system modeling and integrated assessment modeling, the ability to incorporate social-ecological interactions and dynamics remains rudimentary and fragmented.
There is now a rapidly rising recognition of the need for a deeper integration of Earth system analysis for global sustainability, e.g., with the emergence of Future Earth, and there is a scientific maturity in our understanding and ability to represent social and biophysical processes, which now allows for a step-change towards building an integrated community-platform for whole Earth system analysis.
The Urgency
The urgency for this next generation of science arises from the growing evidence that the world is approaching levels of human pressures on the planet that may trigger shifts in feedbacks resulting in tipping elements with irreversible outcomes for the stability and resilience of the Earth system. This scientific evidence collides with the realities and aspirations for world development. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that are expected to replace the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) after 2015, will very likely set out to eradicate poverty and hunger in the world, and ensure stable economic growth for a world population reaching 9-10 billion by 2050.
This is a formidable “going to scale” with every citizen’s right to development. The challenge is that nobody knows how to reconcile the twin objectives, which are tightly interdependent: Of meeting world development aspirations while staying within the safe operating space of a stable planet.
What we do know with certainty though, is that a global future that meets the needs of both people and planet, requires rapid and deep transformations across all scales, sectors and cultures, which moreover need to add up to absolute global sustainability criteria (e.g., a global carbon budget). This calls for a new generation of not only integrated World-Earth analysis, but also a novel approach to back-casting transition pathways that meet desired social and resilience outcomes.
Earthlander project: An Earth League Initiative
This is nothing less than a “Earthlander” endeavor that will require major investments in scientific collaboration among the most advanced Earth system research institutions in the world. The Earth League, an alliance of 17 of the internationally leading scientists and institutions on Earth systems and global sustainability research, has made the commitment to take on this “Earthlander” challenge, of advancing the next generation of World-Earth analysis to deepen our understanding of global risks and opportunities in the Anthropocene and explore transformative pathways towards global sustainability.
As part of this new scientific endeavour the Earth League has decided to recruit an international and inter-disciplinary team of postdoc researchers, the Earth-Docs, to form part of an international young science team to work on this crucial and state-of-the-art “Earthlander” project.
